Here Are All the New Goodies Amazon Just Announced Today

Good news for fans of Alexa and Fire TV!

Amazon knows what time of year it is. With Apple, Samsung, and plenty others unleashing their holiday hopefuls, Amazon was by no means going to stand on the sidelines. At an event earlier today, they announced a ton of brand new hardware, including some major new updates to the Echo and Fire TV. Here’s everything you need to know!

2nd Generation Echo

If you thought the worst part about the original Echo was its ungainly looks, good news — Amazon has given their original smart home speaker a more stylish, compact design with a ton of shell options to choose from. They’ve got interior design-friendly choices like charcoal, sandstone, heather gray, oak veneer, walnut veneer, and silver, and with the shorter stature, that should make the Echo fit in way better with the decor.

It’s not just about the looks, though. Amazon has upgraded the speaker system inside. The Echo now houses a separate tweeter for mids and highs alongside a 2.5″ downward-firing woofer for bass. They’ve also added Dolby sound processing, so all together this 2nd gen echo should make tunes sound much better. Expect to be able to shout commands to Alexa from either farther away thanks to second generation far-field microphones, too.

The 2nd generation Echo can be ordered now for $100 and will ship sometime next month. And, as ever, Amazon has a pretty sweet package deal in tow — order three of the new Echo units and use the code ECHO3PACK, and you’ll get them all for $250.

Echo Spot

Earlier this year, Amazon produced their first Alexa product with a display in the Echo Show. They’ve now shrunk that down into something shaped and sized like an alarm clock, called the Echo Spot. With a 2.5″ round display the Spot won’t be for watching videos like the Echo Show, but it will show information like time, date, and weather at a glance, and can take voice commands and make calls to other Alexa units like any other Alexa speaker. The Spot can be ordered now for $130, but won’t ship until December 19.

Echo Plus

The Echo Plus looks more like the original Echo, but it’s got some of the goodies of the second generation Echo. No hot new looks or new speaker system, but it does get the updated far-field microphone array and Dolby audio processing. So, what’s with the Plus designation? Amazon wants this bigger unit to be a real smart home hub, in the same way Samsung SmartThings is — but made even easier. Amazon says you’ll be able to tell Alexa through the Plus to ‘discover my devices,’ which will not only detect all of your smart home products, but get them connected and set up to be used with Amazon automatically.

With the announcement today that Amazon will soon introduce a new update that enables the creation of recipes, it looks like Amazon really wants to cement Alexa’s role in the smart home. Recipes will let you control multiple devices with one command — you’d be able to set up a morning command that could raise the blinds, turn on the coffee maker, and turn on some music, for example.